A data plane (sometimes referred to as a forwarding plane) may define a portion of a network device architecture that determines a course of action for packets arriving to the network device on an inbound interface. In some cases, a data plane may include a data structure or table used by a network device to look up a destination address (e.g., an Internet protocol (IP) address) associated with an incoming packet. Additionally, the network device may use the data plane to look up information needed to determine a path from the network device to another network device. Conversely, in some cases, the data plane may indicate that a packet is to be discarded.